The Impact of Social Skills Training on Daily Living Skills of Girls with Down Syndrome

The aim of the study was to assess the impact of social skills training on daily living skills for girls with Down syndrome. This was a quasi-experimental study. Forty female children with Down syndrome, aged 8-12 years, were enrolled by simple sampling and randomly assigned to intervention and control groups (20 children in each group). The intervention group received social skills training for 10 sessions (1 hour per session) during 2 months. For data collection, the Vineland scale adjusting behaviors was used as pre-test, post-test and follow-up test in the two groups. Repeated measurement analysis of variance was used for data analysis. There was significant difference in the daily living skills scores between the two groups. Follow-up study also showed that the effect has been maintained after the end of intervention (P<0.001). It seems that social skills training can improve the daily living skills of children with Down syndrome.